Concept Art Head Mounted Display Competition – Terms and Conditions

2 Responses

Very insightful post, Michael. I’m relaly glad that you were careful to point out that VR involves the user sitting down. I can’t imagine a scenario in which it would be safe for a gamer to run around with completely-occluded vision. I’m not saying it could never happen, but it’s not something that seems realistic in the near future, and it’s not something I’d be excited about even if it were somehow made to be safe.Walk-around AR is much safer than walk-around VR, but just like you wouldn’t play Quake on a mobile phone, you wouldn’t play Quake using walk-around AR. The mobile phone interface is more conducive to simple gesture-based games like Angry Birds. Similarly, the mechanics of Quake just wouldn’t make sense anymore if you’re walking around. I agree with you that walk-around AR would not provide a new way to play existing video games. It could, however, add meta information to games you already play in real life, and potentially enable new types of reality-based games.For example, kids could be playing tag on the playground using an AR interface. The AR would highlight the person who’s it and the software would register every time a player gets tagged. Or maybe you could use AR to make it so people don’t have to bring a light and a dark shirt to your pickup ultimate frisbee game assuming it can be integrated into your rec-specs. But I mostly don’t see the distinction between walk-around AR and what you call HUDSpace. I guess I’ll have to wait for your AR-centric blog post for that.AR provides a new way to interface with computers. VR relaly doesn’t. I think you were right on with your initial intuition that VR, at best, provides only an incremental platform shift. But that’s okay. VR enhances an existing interface. Switching from a monitor to a VR headset should be like switching from keyboard-only controls to keyboard/mouse controls. It can greatly enhance my experience with games I already play. It’s for this reason that I’m relaly excited about VR. That’s not to say I wasn’t geeked out the first time I saw a video of Sebastian Thrun wearing his Google Glass. Because I was. But VR can significantly improve a gaming experience I already love.Constrained AR, as you say, may often be used to to provide VR-like experiences. You’d no longer need to make space for a monitor on your desk and you could adjust the opacity of your virtual screens to see through to the real world behind them. You can give your laptop as big of a virtual screen as you want. Wouldn’t it be cool if laptops evolved not to have screens? It would look like everyone was just carrying keyboards around. The opposite of a tablet? =PI’ll finish up this longer-than-I-thought-it-would-be comment with a question. You mentioned that VR can use existing controllers. I agree. But then you go on to say that new VR input will allow VR to reach its potential. What do you have in mind when you say new VR input ? What can it do and how would it be fun? I can’t imagine a scenario in which input from the HMD should be used for anything other than looking around. And this type of input can be used for first-person games only if the in-game character is also sitting. (e.g. flight simulators, racing games, Descent, MechWarrior, or anything with a cockpit) rather than Quake-type first-person shooters.*I have been a fan of yours for a while and I thoroughly enjoyed reading your articles from the 80 s and 90 s about x86, graphics, and VGA programming. It makes me happy that a person who works as hard as you is now putting his effort into a VR project. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign that awesome things are coming. Looking forward to hearing more! =)* It makes me nervous that the Oculus Rift people are focusing on Doom 3 because I feel like that’s exactly the kind of game that can’t make good use of VR head motion tracking inut. Hawken, being a cockpit-based game, gives me a little more hope.